A Great Artificial Eye ... Lidless ... Wreathed In Tears

Science is weird sometimes. The things researchers do in order to prove a hypothesis or solve a problem can often come out as morally or ethically ... odd, to be generous. And growing crying human tissue in a petri dish? Yeah, that definitely comes down on the "manmade horror beyond human comprehension" side of things.

Okay, okay, it's a little more complicated than that. In reality, we don't have good models of human conjunctiva – the tissue that covers the white of the eyeball and the inside of the eyelid. It's a complete mystery as to why. "Why sure slightly overeager doctor, please harvest the outsides of my eyeballs! Sounds like a great and not at all traumatic experience."

Unfortunately, since we do know so little about the conjunctiva, growing an artificial version did involve harvesting naturally occurring human conjunctiva. But only a little, we swear! Most of the conjunctiva organoids the researchers experimented were artificial and grown in the lab.

Oh, you knew there would be experiments. It was never going to be enough to simply create crying human tissue. We needed to give it a reason to really cry. Hey, plenty of diseases affect the conjunctiva, we have to start somewhere in order to help treat those diseases.

And funnily enough, as the researchers exposed their artificial eyes to various stimuli, simulating different allergens, they found something unexpected: Tuft cells, which have never been found in the eye before. These cells are more typically associated with the intestines and their involvement with GI disorders like Crohn's disease. In the conjunctiva organoids, the tuft cells multiplied when the organoid was exposed to allergens, suggesting they play a role in the eye's reaction to allergies.

In addition, being able to grow conjunctiva in a lab suggests a future ability to replace damaged conjunctiva; that means people with ocular burns, eye cancers, or even genetic disorders that have damaged the eye could have their eyes repaired. It's just too bad Sauron spent all his time trying to conquer Middle-Earth; if he'd invested into ocular research maybe he could have grown himself some conjunctiva to combat that intense dry eye he had going throughout the Third Age.